Rolled bandages have been typically made of woven absorbent cotton gauze, slit in the proper width and supplied in rolls 5 or 10 yards long, wrapped and packaged in fiber board boxes. Typical thread counts are 44 threads in the warp by 40 threads in the filling. Thread counts this high have generally been necessary so that the interticies are small enough to provide sufficient cover preventing gross dirt from passing through the structure and onto a wound or primary dressing surface. Further, with this density of yarns it is possible to prevent or reduce ravelling by compressing the edge of a damp bandage just prior to slitting to hammer down the warp threads into intimate contact with the filling. This does, however, allow some linting of the partially destroyed crushed fibers and contamination off the wound.
These high count woven bandages have several disadvantages in that under the normal stress of bandaging, they do not stretch and, hence, cannot conform to the irregular contours of the limb, arm, finger, toe, or other part of the body they are being used upon. Furthermore, because they are composed of densely packed cotton fibers inside of yarns, there is but little space for body exidates and they are characterized by relatively low absorbency.
To overcome the disadvantages of these traditional bandages, woven elastic bandages have been made which exhibit better conformability. These are generally made by immersing low count woven gauze fabric in a mercerizing solution which causes considerable shrinkage upon washing and drying, the fabric remains in its shrunken state and hence, can be stretched under tension to almost its original dimensions. Such procedures and fabrics are illustrated in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,379,574 and 2,404,837. In order to impart elasticity by this procedure, it is necessary to use a very low thread count, characteristically 14 .times. 10 per inch. Tightly woven gauzes do not shrink sufficiently to provide high enough elasticity because of the lack of mobility of the yarns. Articles of commerce made by this procedure characteristically finish out at a count of 16 by 14. The absorbency of these woven elastic bandages are, therefore, necessarily quite low because they share the disadvantage of all fibers being tightly woven in yarns as is the case with woven high count bandages but in addition there are less yarns to the inch. Further, because of the very open mesh structure of the finished bandage, there is far less protection of the wound from contamination by outside sources. A further disadvantage is that, with this very low yarn count, it is impossible to prevent ravelling by the compressive method used on high count fabrics. Indeed, if the edges are compressed, and some transient bonding occurs between warp and filling yarns, this bond is broken upon the application of stress in order to secure product conformability and the crushed fibers drop off in the form of lint with resultant contamination of the wound area. In an effort to overcome this disadvantage, a far more complicated slitting procedure has been employed. The elastic gauze must be slit then run over a folding plate to produce what is known as a "C" fold and then wound into finished form.